What rumbles many with this case is the fact this guy pocketed 100's of thousands of dollars in donations just for hosting a file-sharing site. He has no talent other than stealing money that should have gone to the copyright owners/publishers/distributors and labels of the music he allowed to be shared. Artists pour their talent, resources and livelihoods into their art and get precious little back. They are told the public want music for free and that the only way they can recoup there losses is to play live and yet thousands are prepared to donate money to an 'mpeg pimp' who gives them the tools to bypass distributors like iTunes and download illegally.

What is so depressing is many obviously do have the money to spend downloading music and yet they choose to use illegal file-sharing sites and have the audacity to donate money to them.. We can only try to educate and implore people that if you are going to buy music, buy it the right way, via an online distributor like iTunes, Watunes, Amazon etc.. then the artist gets what they have a right to and deserve and you get a quality download without lining the pockets of skumbags like Alan Ellis!

Alan Ellis told the court he had no intention to defraud copyright holders

A man who ran a music-sharing website with almost 200,000 members has been found not guilty of conspiracy to defraud at Teesside Crown Court.

Alan Ellis, 26, was the first person in the UK to be prosecuted for illegal file-sharing.

He operated the site, called Oink, from his flat in Middlesbrough from 2004 until it was closed down in a police raid in October 2007.

In that time Oink facilitated the download of 21 million music files.

Bank accounts

The site allowed active members to find other people on the web who were prepared to share files - enabling users to get hold of free music.

Users were asked to make a donation, although it was not necessary for them to do so to invite friends to join the site.

The jury was told that police found almost US $300,000 in Mr Ellis's Paypal account and that he received $18,000 (£11,000) a month in donations from people using his website.